"O, take me--do! They won't send for me, never! Take me, and I'll give you--O, Mrs.Rosenberg, I'll give you--" For a little while there was quite a scene at the little grocery, and it repented Mandoline that she had ever hidden Dotty's hat.

The trundle-bed waked up at both ends and screamed; the black and tan dog, who slept under the counter in the store, barked lustily; the parrot in the blue cage called out, "Quit that! quit that!" and Mrs.Rosenberg was afraid a policeman would come in to inquire the cause of the uproar.

She pattered about in a pair of her husband's cotton-velvet slippers, and tucked all her little ones into bed again, very much as if they had been clothes in a boiler, which she was forcing down with a stick.

She was a woman who would be obeyed; and Dotty, finding it of no use to hold out against fate, went up stairs at last, and lay down beside Mandoline on the "pin-feathers." This stolen visit had turned out quite, quite different from her anticipations.

Instead of a delightful supper of some mysterious Jewish cookery, she had been drinking gall and wormwood.